What I've Been Playing This Week (aka Pile of Shame Sunday)

My Scottish sniper, checking out the new Warden Armour in XCOM 2

The following post is part of a series of posts that are published every Sunday to update readers on what Mark G has been up to with respect to finishing off games on his "Pile of Shame". The games to target are picked by Choicest Games contributors Choona, Luke and myself. As I'll be talking about my progress through these games, there may be spoilers ahead, especially for games containing a narrative. Consider yourself warned.

Cally's Caves 4

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 88%

There doesn't seem to be any new enemies on what used to be the General's level (who is now on my side) and I managed to finish the level with little difficulty (so all I'm really doing is, as usual, levelling up my weapons). I've actually levelled the discgun quite a bit and while I wasn't overly impressed with it originally, it's actually quite a potent and deadly weapon when you're spamming discs all over the screen! I'm now on level 7 so two more levels to go before I finally finish the normal game and New Game+ for Cally's Caves 4!

Hand of Fate

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 91%

On hold while I'm playing Cally's Caves 4 😊

Stardew Valley

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 20%

On hold while I'm playing Cally's Caves 4 😊

The Testament of Sherlock Holmes

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 25%

I haven't made any further progress on this – it's now on hold while I am distracted by… well… a lot of other games 😊.

Battlefield 1

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 10%

I haven't made any further progress on this – it's now on hold while I am distracted by… well… a lot of other games 😊.

XCOM 2

• Picked by Luke
• Percentage Complete = 47%

I completed a couple of missions this week in XCOM 2. One of them involved hacking into a terminal and it ended up being a Flawless mission (if only they were all that easy); it was also the first mission I encountered a Gatekeeper, a giant, heavily-armoured, floating eyeball. Thankfully, my elite squad made short work of it and most of the credit goes to my Psi-Operative (it turned out the Gatekeeper is actually an organic target so it helps when you've got psionic abilities because their attacks go through armour). It will be interesting to see Dr. Tygan's autopsy results once he finally dissects one of the Gatekeeper's open.

I encountered a second Gatekeeper during one of the main story missions where I had to locate the Codex's point of origin. During this mission, you find this thing called a Psi Gate which looks like a portal to another dimension. There were also a lot of Chryssalids on the mission and one of them prevented me getting another "Flawless" mission by intercepting my soldier during the XCOM movement turn! So, I suppose if you get within a certain radius of burrowed Chryssalids, there's nothing you can do to stop them.

In other news, all my troops are now upgraded with sexy Warden Armour; it reminds me of the Personal Armour from UFO: Enemy Unknown - all I need now is an outrageous haircut to top it all off… I've also unlocked two new abilities: "Fan Fire" which allows my sniper (who is now a colonel) to fire three shots instead of one with the pistol and "Hail of Bullets" which my grenadier can use to get a guaranteed hit (at the expense of all ammo).

Fortnite

• Picked by Choona
• Percentage Complete = 90%

I played another two rounds of Battle Royale this week and managed to place 20th and 50th; I even managed to get a kill on some poor sod that was admiring the view at the crest of a hill - too bad I was already there, lurking behind him!

I tried to complete some side quests in Save the World since I had nothing better to do. One of them involved playing as a Constructor, which I did but he was only levelled up to level 2 and could only build this mysterious machine which I mistook for some sort of sentry turret – it didn't end up doing anything (it's only later on I realised it's meant to be a device that puts some sort of energy field around any walls in its vicinity – helps when you read about the abilities before diving straight in, huh?).

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]